An Arlington Public Schools union leader objected to plans by Washington-Liberty High School to use AI to read off student names at graduation.
Parent June Prakash told the Arlington School Board at a meeting on Thursday that she is the parent of a Washington-Liberty student who will be a senior next year, and asked rhetorically, “Who asked for this?”
Ms. Prakash is the president of the Arlington Education Association, but was speaking “in her personal capacity,” according to ARLNow.
Washington-Liberty High Principal Alexander Duncan III previously told the school community in a letter that “names are too often mispronounced during commencement ceremonies, which can detract from the milestone moment.”
The AI tool, provided by the company Tassel, which specializes in graduations and similar events, will be used along with professional name readers “to prioritize cultural nuance, ensuring every name is pronounced exactly as the student intends,” Mr. Duncan said, according to ARLNow.
Tassel, which previously worked with voice artists to manually record names, worked with voice artists to produce AI versions of their voices to use in ceremonies, the company explains in a blog post on its website.
Graduates are able to listen to how their name will be read prior to their ceremony, and are then able to either approve the pronunciation or send in their own recorded pronunciation of their name.
After that, one of the voice artists records for the graduation using the recording as a guide, Tassel said in the blog.
Previously, school faculty read off student names.
At the meeting, Ms. Prakash argued that “graduation is one of those most meaningful moments in a student’s academic journey. … Turning that moment into an Al moment makes this feel standardized, impersonal rather than authentic and human.”
Ms. Prakash also said that the use of AI, instead of achieving the nuance Mr. Duncan mentioned, “can unintentionally send the message that efficiency matters more than identity.”
In a post on LinkedIn, Tassel CEO Chase Rigby wrote in a response to a prior version of this article that by using Tassel, “the school thoughtfully times the procession and it eliminates any pump-fakes or live-guessing games that always plagued these events.”
Mr. Rigby added that Tassel generated 1.3 million names last year for schools, all of which used Tassel again for 2026. The company is generating almost 2 million names for ceremonies this year.
Washington-Liberty High’s graduation is scheduled for 9 a.m. on June 13 at EagleBank Arena, located on the campus of George Mason University.
Mr. Rigby told The Washington Times that, in addition to Washington-Liberty High, Tassel has worked with multiple other high schools and universities across the Washington area.
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